


She

by beetlejoos



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Malcolm Bright Whump, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Graphic Violence, Rape/Non-con Elements, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:34:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27151165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetlejoos/pseuds/beetlejoos
Summary: A short story for Whumptober.For the prompt: Drugged
Comments: 21
Kudos: 102
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	She

**Author's Note:**

> So... this is a strange little thing I ended up writing last night. 
> 
> Please heed the tags! It's creepy.

A hand strokes through his hair. Malcolm lets out a tiny sigh.

 _S’nice,_ he thinks vaguely. He can smell perfume. Then a sharp fingernail digs into his scalp and he grunts in surprise.

“Baby,” murmurs a voice, a soft, female voice and Malcolm’s suddenly clawing his way back to alertness… because it’s not a voice he recognises. _He’s in the wrong place_ , he thinks in alarm; _woken up in the wrong bed,_ and he feels a vague rush of guilt… because he has to tell this woman that she’s mistaken…

Only he can’t quite bring himself to move. He can’t open his eyes. Something soft and silky is lying across them, the pressure light as a kiss. “Wha,” he slurs and he wonders if he’s drunk.

 _Still_ _drunk? What was he doing last night?_

“Ssh.” The hand comes to rest against his cheek, so deliciously cool he’s pressing into it despite himself. _No,_ insists some small voice in his brain, _don’t,_ but his head is heavy and too hot and her touch is so soft. So gentle…

 _Who is she?!_ screams the voice.

“You just rest a little while longer, darling,” she whispers, a voice like honey, a touch like cool water. There’s a tiny stab of pain in his hand that finally pierces through the fog…

… and then it rolls over him again, smothering panic and thought. Smoothing him out into _nothing_.

***

Hands on his wrists.

Hands on his chest.

Hands on his face. Brushing so light, it could almost be a dream.

But he’s not dreaming. And he’s not awake, either. He’s somewhere… _in-between._

His limbs are heavy. His mind is mist. He has thoughts and they pop, like bubbles, before he can remember what they were.

 _Move,_ says the little voice, but he can’t. He tries, but it’s like trying to clench a kidney, flex a bone. The connections just… _aren’t there_.

Dani’s hands are cold, he remembers. His mother’s manicured and immaculate. JT’s are calloused, Ainsley’s too hot, Gil’s always reassuring.

These hands creep, cool and sure, like spiders.

 _Spiders,_ he thinks, _yes - something to do with —_ and then it’s gone.

***

The clearest thing he feels is the slide of the needle, poking like sunbursts through the clouds. He hears her mutter things he thinks aren’t meant for him to hear, that he catches on his way in and out. Numbers. _Doses._

 _Nurse,_ he decides, and for a second he’s pleased with the insight before he realises it’ll be gone again in minutes.

Then he wonders if it’s a thought he’s had before.

***

He surfaces, floating up slowly from the black. Something’s tugging him up…

… hands, on his throat. Finger-tips ghost lightly under his chin. Thumbs lie flat beneath his sealed eyes.

“My darling,” she says, from behind the top of his head. He feels her breath on his temples, and he shivers.

“… who…,” he tries, and can’t manage any more. She tuts and there’s a distant beep. The static in his limbs crackles a little louder as a finger slides over his lips and lays there.

“Ssh. Still for me.” A warm cloth works over his neck, under his jaw, dabs delicately at his upper lip. He can’t turn his head. He doesn’t understand until he feels the light scrape of the blade over his Adam’s apple and when he does, the panic stays locked up in his chest. He can’t even twitch a finger. The razor glides along his cheek, his bare throat. Her hands press and dance across his face and when he tries to scream, she hums at the tiny moan that comes out and presses his jaw closed.

When it’s done the warmth is back again, and then a soft, scented towel dabs him dry. Her fingers lie against his sensitive, shorn skin.

“Nice and smooth,” she says. “Like the night we met.”

 _How long,_ he thinks, _oh god how long —_ and then the clouds rise up around him and he’s pulled down, lost again.

***

It takes time, to shore up information. Malcolm can only focus for so long before it all slides apart; can only locate each part of his body with a supreme effort of will. He catalogues.

His feet are bare.

It’s a while before he realises the rest of him is, too. Usually he’s warm and covered, but sometimes he crests the edge of consciousness to feel a rush of cool air. Her fingers will be on him, usually with the washcloth or the towel, cleansing him inch by inch. Massaging, rubbing that perfumed scent into his skin, patting him dry. She whispers things. _Baby. Darling. My own._ She likes to stroke his hair. A couple of times he enjoys it, grateful for the calm and comfort it brings, before he remembers. He still can’t do a thing to make it stop.

_Black Widow._

The thought arrives in his head as she’s gently wrapping something around his wrist - he thinks it might be a restraint, soft as a ribbon. _Devouring her mate._ _Wrapping them in silk._ He gets flashes of bodies, so peaceful they could still be sleeping, as bare and soft as newborn babies. _That was what they nicknamed her,_ he remembers in a flash, the closest thing to clarity he’s had. He went looking for her…

_Are his team looking for him?_

Time isn’t real, here. He doesn’t know how long it’s been. He’s not having dreams, or terrors. Whatever she’s pumping his veins with keeps him too deep to think…

 _But not forever_ , whispers the voice. _She doesn’t know about his prescriptions_ , _doesn’t know about his tolerance_. Part of him is waiting… fighting against the float, the formless terror, the sickening chemical swirl. _Be ready,_ says the voice.

_Be ready for when…_

***

He's out of the clouds. One minute he's a blank nothing, then he's clearer than he’s ever been. He can feel the mattress below him, the silky touch of whatever’s wrapped around his wrists. He can twitch his hand, and feel the tug of the needle.

 _Thank you_ , he thinks - he’s not sure who he’s thinking it to. Now he just needs a little longer, a little more control… _let her not be there, let her not see…._

“Hello, my darling,” she murmurs, and then he realises: he’s not risen. He’s been summoned.

 _Please,_ he tries to say. It’s scarcely a whisper, scarcely a word. “No…muh… gsuh.” _No more drugs_ , he means, and maybe she understands him him anyway.

“Baby,” she soothes. “you need your medicine. And now, you need to eat.” He doesn’t feel hungry - he doesn’t feel _anything_ \- but he’s finally with it enough to _think._ This might be his chance, if she unties his hands, or just eases up on the drip long enough that he can control his limbs. If she sits him up, takes off the blindfold…

But she doesn’t. Something sickly sweet, viscous, dribbles into his mouth and Malcolm almost gags on it. For a horrible moment he thinks the muscles that control his swallowing are still stupefied, and then reflex kicks in and he manages to force it down. He feels a touch at his lips again and presses them closed, does the closest thing he can do towards shaking his head - a slow, heavy loll to the side.

Her fingers prise his jaw open. More of them slide into his mouth, coated in the stuff and Malcolm’s cry of outrage and disgust is buried around them. “Swallow,” she coos and he can do nothing else, and only then does she pull them out. He chokes on the sugary concoction, recoiling from her hand on his face as much as he can. It’s the first time he’s been awake enough to experience his own helplessness with any kind of clarity and he can feel his face heating in mortification, tears dampening whatever’s wrapped around his eyes.

“Gt… t’ff,” he gasps and the slap spins his head to the side, mixes the tang of copper in amongst the sickly mixture coating his tongue. Her hand grabs his jaw, nails digging in painfully and he realises too late how dangerous it is to have angered the person who has complete control.

“Bad,” she hisses. The needle jerks in his arm, the beep chiming after. Her nails grip his ear, twisting and tugging painfully like he’s a misbehaving child. _Stop,_ he tries to say, but the word never makes it past his lips, the deep roaring up to meet him, and then...

***

He wakes. He's aware of two things almost straight away.

One: for the first time since he woke up here, he’s not drugged out of his mind.

Two: something is seriously _wrong._

He’s not cocooned lightly any more, the gossamer touch of the bindings and the blanket. He was suspended, floating in silk - now he’s held fast, pinned like a butterfly. _Strapped_ , his mind clarifies, _he’s strapped down,_ his breath wheezing in and out of his chest painfully. He can feel the restricting bands pressing down against him because…

Because…

His mouth feels clumsy, his tongue too big. There’s a horrible pressure in his head. He’s being held tight against gravity, against the weight of his own body trying to slip down…

Headfirst. She’s tied him _upside down,_ the surface he’s on tilted steeply enough that he feels a wave of vertigo even in the darkness. His head feels full of blood, a new kind of dizziness layering on top of the directionless haze he’s been floating in.

His mouth floods with saliva. He tries to swallow and almost chokes.

He knows now, why she’s let him wake up as much as he has. So he could realise his predicament; so he’d be lucid enough to panic. “Nuh,” he moans and he hears her footsteps from somewhere near his head. Then nothing. It’s the first time he’s been aware of her proximity when she hasn’t, in some way, been touching him.

He tries to take a deep breath and coughs. His head reverberates with it. It’s not mist and spiderwebs in his mind anymore; it’s lumps of concrete clogging up his brain, sitting in his lungs. His own body, that he’s only lightly inhabited for the last who knows how long, feels like more of a cage than ever. “Please,” he tries, and for once it sounds like an actual word, hoarse and weak and scraped out painfully, but a word nonetheless.

She doesn’t say anything.

“I… can’t… breathe,” he manages, one wheeze at a time. He hears her heels shift on the floor.

“It will get more difficult.” Her voice is a monotone, expressionless. “The lungs are compressed by the rest of the organs. It happens slowly. Suffocation. Sometimes, a clot in the brain ends it first.”

Malcolm swallows again, painfully. His head feels swollen, feverishly hot. He tries to remember how the others died, but all he can remember is the photos, the tender posing of the bodies. “Please… let me… up.”

Silence.

 _Use your brain,_ suggests the voice that’s been sleeping for a while now. _She’s given it back to you. Do something with it._

“But… you take… care… of me,” he says, and hears her rush of breath.

“Ungrateful,” she snarls.

“N… no,” he gasps. “‘M… sorry. Made… a mistake.”

“Sorry?”

“Yes.”

A pause. “You want… to be looked after?”

 _No,_ he screams inside his head, _no, I don’t want you to ever touch me again._

“… Yes.”

There’s a long silence. Malcolm starts to feels the pendulum swing towards unconsciousness… then the surface he’s secured to shudders. With a slow whirring sound, he rises, his legs lowering until he’s lying flat again.

The straps come off, leaving just the silken loops around his wrists. He tries to take a deep breath, and it’s a little easier. The pulsing behind his eyes fades down to something more bearable.

“Thank… you.”

There’s rustling; her movements, swishing around him. He feels something swab at his arm and his breath catches. “No… please,” he gasps, unable to keep the panic out of his voice.

“You _said._ “

“Want… to be…. here. With you.”

He feels her hands on his cheeks, stroking his face, brushing his tears away, and that only makes them fall harder. “Please,” he sobs, because _he can’t go back_ , back into that twilight where he can’t _think_ , where he’s just a silent _thing_ to receive her touches, stroked and petted like a drugged up doll. _Pain would be better._ _Anything_ _would be better…_

“Baby,” she whispers. There’s a creak, a sudden weight along his side and he realises she’s climbed into the cot with him. Her hand rubs circles over his naked chest, fondles down to his belly. He bites his lip to stop himself from screaming, swallows back a wave of nausea.

He tries to make a fist, and can.

He tries to bend his toes, and can.

Her nails rake across his skin, her breath whispers over his throat. She worms her way up, bringing her lips flush against his. He takes a deep breath, kisses her…

… and head-butts her, hard as he can.

She doesn’t shout. There’s no sound beyond the crack of their skulls; the noise of her slumping against the bed-rail. Then she’s still.

_Run run run run_

His wrists are still tied down. Malcolm’s breath is coming in too-rapid pants; he knows he’s panicking, knows he needs to stay calm to get out of this, but his body won’t listen. He can still feel phantom touches all over his skin; the pull of the drugs weighing him down. He wastes a minute tugging and twisting against the bindings, no logic, no plan, just terror.

_She’s going to wake up. She’s going to wake up, and then…_

His fingers fumble at the straps tying him to the bed. They’ve not been tied with a mind to keeping someone down who’s fully conscious; with his eyes, with hands that trembled less violently, he’d be out of them in seconds. As it is, he finally manages to tug one wrist loose, then the other, and then he’s heaving himself over the bed-rail, collapsing onto the floor with a painful thud.

It’s freezing. He’s naked. After a second, he remembers he’s still blindfolded and doesn’t have to be, and he shakily works the material off his face. It’s worse without it, a blur of disorientating lights and shadows that spin around him, his eyes refusing to focus on any of them. He clutches the floor beneath him to steady himself. _No time for that_ , says the voice. _Go. Fast. Now._

 _There._ A black shape - that could be a door, _please god._ He tries to get to his feet and collapses before he’s made it to one knee. He’s shaking from the adrenaline, but also weakness; his body unused to any kind of independent movement, pins-and-needles creeping over him. He starts to crawl.

There’s a _creak_ from behind him.

He crawls faster, the ceiling spinning above him, so dizzy he’s not even sure he’s on track for the door any more, that he isn’t just moving in a crab-like diagonal to crash into the wall. He risks glancing back. All he can see of her is a shock of dark hair against pale sheets -

The dark shape moves on the bed, and he hears himself make a sound he’s never made before, the whine of a terrified animal. He drags himself along, shutting his eyes to help with the dizziness and _now he’s the spider,_ he thinks hysterically, _crawling along, blind and scuttling…_ His fingers hit wood and he tries to drag himself up, reaching for the handle above him, almost toppling to the floor again.

He hears the sound of shoes being planted on the floor.

“No no no no,” he chants, fumbling for the handle, finally gripping it and turning it and he falls forward along with the door, face first into whatever’s outside as he hears her footsteps _running_ towards him —

“Help! Help me!” His voice _isn’t loud enough,_ just like he _wasn’t fast enough_ … he tries again, not bothering with words, just a desperate _scream_ he flings out into the empty corridor -

She falls on him, nails and hands and _rage,_ clawing and scratching and he tries to bring his arms up to shield himself, but he’s too weak to do anything but lie dizzily under her as she rains down blows. He can’t focus on her face beneath the wild tangle of hair, but he sees the syringe, the glint of the needle weaving towards him —

_No no no -_

It jabs into his neck. He claps a hand against the injection point as her eyes find his own, wide with terror, and she smiles. “Sleep now,” she hisses and he knows she’ll never let him wake up again. The drugs slip over him like weighted blanket, swallowing his adrenaline, numbing his fear. _This is it_ , he thinks, but it’s a quiet thought, sleepy and slow already… She’ll keep him trapped now, like a bug under a glass, until he

just fades

_fades_

_fadesaway…_

*

*

*

Hands.

On his face.

His wrists.

Sliding under his jaw.

He moans. “Malcolm? Bright, can you hear me? _”_

“Get those off him, for christ sakes…”

“Building’s secure, boss.”

“How the hell did he make a disturbance like this? You think the neighbour heard something else?”

“Bright? Can you hear me? _Bright?_ ”

His body is lead, his mind pin-wheeling worse than anything he’s felt before. He can’t feel his tongue. His blood thumps through him sluggishly.

“Nuh,” he mumbles. “No…. drugs, no…”

“No drugs, kid. You’re going cold turkey as of five minutes ago.” The voice lowers. “Get a medic on the line and find out what the hell that stuff has been doing to him.”

The hand is back on his cheek. He’s so weak, but he tries to recoil. "Dn't... touch me." Immediately it lifts away, even as he registers it’s rougher than he remembers. Soap, not perfume. Warm, not cool. He hears an intake of breath.

“Hey,” says the voice. “It’s ok.” It’s a voice he knows well… but something’s wrong with it. It floats down from miles above him, soft and shaky-sounding. “Bright, it's me… can you open your eyes?”

 _Blindfolded,_ he tries to explain, but the word is too long, too complicated for him to work his tongue round. He settles for a mumbled “no,” and hears a rough chuckle by way of response.

“That’s ok, kid. You just take it easy.”

He knows these voices. _His team. JT. Dani. _“… Gil?”

“I’m here, Bright.”

“Spider,” he manages to say. “Gonna… eat me.”

There’s silence. He realises sadly that they must have gone, sunk back into the black… or maybe they were never here…

“The uh… the spider lady’s gone, Bright,” says JT’s voice, finally.

“You’re good,” confirms Dani.

“Yeah. You’re safe now.” Gil says it so firmly that Malcolm feels part of himself relax. _Gil wouldn’t lie to him. Gil locks the monsters away._ His eyes blink open before he’s quite realised he's doing it, struggling to focus on the faces peering down at him.

“Hey, kid,” Gil says, relief crinkling the corners of his eyes. “How you doing?”

“Hey," he slurs. He considers the question. "Like… to wake up… now.” 

“I’ll say. Time to get that skinny ass out of bed,” grunts JT. On his other side, Dani quirks him a smile. Her eyes are wet.

“Alright, then,” Gil says. “You just stay with me, ok? I’m gonna be right here with you.”

Something’s off, something's missing... then Malcolm understands what it is. He tries to lift his arm. The movement is tiny, more of a twitch, but after a moment he feels a warm hand hesitantly taking his own. _Gil’s hand._ He'd know it anywhere, he realises now.

He clings on, as tightly as he can.

“I’ll stay,” he says, and it’s a promise.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Inspired by story "She" by beetlejoos](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27156430) by [stlouisphile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stlouisphile/pseuds/stlouisphile)
  * [Inspired by story "She" by beetlejoos](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27156430) by [stlouisphile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stlouisphile/pseuds/stlouisphile)




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